Why Pinterest Ended Live Feedback in Creative Presentations

Editor's note: This piece is part of our Columnist Network series, which explores the tactical thoughts and actions from Adweek's community of high-level experts. Today, Jim Habig, global head of business marketing at Pinterest, shares his strategies for connecting an international team with a multimarket focus. 'Show me global' A lovely side effect of writing a column urging people to reconnect with your network is … a lot of conversations. In one such conversation, my old friend Paul was talking through an impending reorganization, facing the decision to either focus on his region or go for a global role. He said something that stuck with me: "Show me global on a map, ya know?" It reminded me that the moniker we are often so fond of—global—is a bit of a canard. There are no global teams, only multimarket teams—or, if you're in a situation as my team found ourselves about a year ago, a U.S. team that sometimes thinks about other markets. To build a truly global team, it’s taken some unlearning, especially around working norms, meeting mores and behaviors to ensure teammates around the world feel on equal footing. We by no means have it all figured out, but I want to share a few of the techniques we’re adopting to ensure inclusivity, deep collaboration and locally resonant work. Save it for the show One of my team leads is fond of citing a parable from the seminal MTV reality show Laguna Beach, where LC interrupts a friend telling a great story with, "Save it for the show." Hold back the good stuff for the cameras. With a distributed team, live meetings don’t quite work. With colleagues across APAC, West and East Coast U.S. and across EMEA, the chances of getting us all together are slim. We’ve taken to using smaller group meetings essentially as performances, recording everything and tabling Q&A and collaboration for asynchronous but lively Slack channels. There are exceptions, of course, and we try to share the pain across time zones when we truly need to convene live. Please hold questions Another new rule pertains to working with (predominantly U.S.-based) agency partners: In creative presentations, we now have a strict prohibition on live feedback. This feels supremely weird in the moment, and I’m sure it has irked our agency partners who are eager to hear some reaction to their work, but there’s just too high a likelihood that those first pieces of feedback will bias not only the agency but also subsequent feedback. So, we’ve just declared a moratorium. Now, our agency presents and we greet it with silent smiles. We say thank you, obviously, but it gives us a chance to gather, marinate and synthesize across teams. I think it’s made the feedback sharper, too. We also make a habit of asking who hasn’t weighed in, because if you don’t intentionally include, you’ll unintentionally exclude. So we’re reinforcing a behavior where, at the top of every meeting, we’ll ask who isn’t in the room who needs to be. Embrace the value of cold calling—everyone has their own Zoom rhythm, so it’s key to clear space for points of view that might not be as readily volunteered. Scale, then nail Finally, strive to launch one scaled program, product or campaign per quarter outside the U.S. The challenge with a U.S.-based global team is that the psychology too often goes: "Let’s just get it right in the U.S. and then scale it." This never really works, and you end up with a bunch of canned U.S. programs you’re trying to shoehorn into other markets. So be intentional about flipping the model—start outside the states and adapt from there. An old boss of mine used to say, "Everything happens in a market." There are no global marketing teams, only teams that operate in multiple markets. But with a few changes to our working norms, and embracing the tools that enable transparency and inclusion, we can span physical distance to knit our teams tighter than ever.

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Why Pinterest Stopped Live Feedback With Creative Presentations

Jim Habig on an inclusive, global approach

‘Show me global’

Jim Habig

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Jim Habig